Chelyabinsk branch of the "Knowledge" society and atheistic propaganda in the perestroika policy

The article considers the Scientific and Methodological Council on Atheism to be a special part of the propaganda system of the All-Union Society «Knowledge». The dual nature of the party's tasks, as well as the scientific community in the educational structure, are taken into account. The scientific environment tried to create a community of professional lecturers, while the party was forming a mass organization structure with the tasks of broad propaganda. The functioning of the scientific and methodological council supervising the work of the lecturers is analyzed. Special attention is given to the work of the scientific and methodological councils in the Chelyabinsk branch of the «Knowledge» society. Attempts to solve the problems of the lectures and the teaching staff quality of both the atheistic and general state of lecturing in the Chelyabinsk branch of the «Knowledge» society are studied. The scientific and methodological councils' attempts to increase their effectiveness are established and analyzed. The reasons for the failed improvement of the propaganda effectiveness through the involvement of university employees, the system of reviews, economic incentives, and other incentive measures are also revealed. The conclusion is that the change in the economic policy by the state in the form of self-financing and self-sufficiency has set the country's organizations the task of optimizing costs. For this reason, they begin to refuse lectures en masse. However, at a certain stage in the development of Soviet society, in establishing the policy of perestroika and new political thinking, such active propaganda and its extensive structures, including atheistic ones, were considered by the authorities to be unnecessary. The institutions of ideological work were removed in favor of the new policy of the authorities.